In the course of oil exploration, wells are drilled into the earth's surface. During such drilling operations, drilling fluids are utilized for lubrication purposes and several waste by-products are generated such as, for example, salt water, drilling muds, additives and chemicals. The disposal of these by-products must be accomplished in an environmentally safe manner under controlled circumstances to account for the amount of waste which is disposed.
Typically, tank trucks transport the drilling waste from a drilling site to a storage or reservoir facility. The reservoir may consist of above ground storage tanks, open pits, or underground rock formations. The owner of the storage facility desires to maintain accurate records of the amount of waste being deposited at his storage facility to both prevent overflow of his facility and accurately invoice users for the use of his disposal site. Further, the owner desires to monitor the type of waste being disposed to ensure that undesirable materials will not be deposited at the waste disposal site.
Previously developed disposal systems have required a user to manually document the amount of material being deposited at the disposal site. In order to accurately monitor the amount of waste being disposed, such previously developed systems required the presence of the owner to monitor the type of waste being deposited as well as whether the depositor was authorized to use the reservoir site. It was therefore necessary for the continuous monitoring by the reservoir site owner of the site which resulted in a costly and inefficient operation.
A need has thus arisen for a waste disposal system which automatically and accurately monitors the users of such a system to permit only selective users to dispose of waste material. Additionally, such a system requires the monitoring of the type of waste material being deposited. Furthermore, a need has arisen for a waste disposal monitoring system which monitors the amount of waste material present at the reservoir site. A need has further arisen for an accurate monitoring system for detecting the amount of material deposited by a particular user of the disposal system.